


The Cure for a Hard Day

by LeeMorrigan



Series: Red Head in a Red Shirt [1]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek Beyond - Fandom, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Bones and Kirk friendship, Bones deserves hugs, Bones finds love, Bones is nolonger a firth or third wheel, Chapel deserves a medal, Doctor Chapel, F/M, Red Shirts, Someone to save Bones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-21
Updated: 2017-11-21
Packaged: 2019-02-05 06:56:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12789228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeeMorrigan/pseuds/LeeMorrigan
Summary: After Spock and Uhura have been together and Kirk has found his own partner, Bones was the fifth/third wheel. Until he met a young woman who is the second-in-command of Security after 'Cupcake', who was cross-trained for Security and a Medic. After a long shift of patching everyone up from a mission gone to heck in a hand basket, Bones returns to his quarters to find his favorite security team member waiting to make sure he takes care of himself, and provide a cuddle.





	The Cure for a Hard Day

**Author's Note:**

> Somewhat inspired by Lady Gaga's song of the same title as well as the idea that Bones needs a girlfriend who can handle herself and is as sassy as he and Kirk.  
> I do not own STAR TREK (or Pike would still be alive), I stuck with Chapel being a doctor now, and the only thing I own is Leiutenant Raphaelle 'Rafe' Grainne.

Bones was weary down to his nickname-sake. He swore he had been awake two weeks and hadn’t had solid food in at least half as long, yet he was aware that medically speaking, that was not possible. Even if biology would not have knocked him out before that point, Chapel would have. She had once been his best nurse and now she was the best Doctor he had ever had the pleasure to work with. He just couldn’t break her of the habit she developed as his chief nurse, of looking after him like a mother hen.

Dragging himself into his quarters, he barely remembered to type in his passcode so he didn’t just walk right into a closed door. Upon entering, however, he realized he wasn’t alone. Citrus and kiwi. He would know that smell anywhere. He could remember when he only got to smell it up close, whenever she was laying in his infirmary due to yet another away mission gone bad. Now, he got to smell it almost daily. Especially when he worked too hard and got her worried.

“Rafe? Sweetheart?”

She appeared around the corner, having probably been in the ‘fresher when he first stepped into the cabin. Her long, flame-red hair was hanging in loose waves over her shoulders, and she wore her black slacks and black undershirt, without her red uniform tunic or her phaser, and her bare feet poked out from beneath her breeches. She was, to put it mildly, a sight for sore eyes.

“Looks like I chose right when I figured soup. Come on, I’ll plug it in while you kick off your shoes.”

He stepped in but honestly felt too tired to move any further in.

“I ate.”

She turned, looking at him with a raised-eyebrow that could out-do Spock.

“Oh really? When?”

He thought about it for a second.

“Chapel brought in two lunches about three hours ago and made me eat one, under threat of being chained to a desk until I did eat.”

His favorite security officer smiled somewhat evilly.

“I knew there was a reason I liked her. That woman needs a medal.”

Bones felt a small grin touch his lips.

“She says the same thing about you.”

Rafe chuckled as she reached for Bones’s hand, tugging him to the edge of his bed. He didn’t resist. He doubted at this point, that he could have even if he had held any desire to do so. Once she had him seated on the edge of the bed, she moved to kneel behind him, adjusting till he sat in the V of her legs, her warm, work-roughened hands moving to his shoulders.

She started with slow, steady circles around the tight points in his neck and tops of his shoulders, then down behind his scapulae. He could feel each little muscle and tendon loosening under her ministrations. Her hands felt like she had just taken them out of the oven, they were so warm, and he was sure he was turning to butter beneath them. Not that he minded.

“Were you able to get through everybody?”

He let his head fall forward, chin almost resting on his chest as her hands moved a little lower on his back, working from the spine outward.

“Yeah. Kosimov and Delco are going to be out in the morning. Censik and Harrow ought to be fine to return to their own rooms about this time tomorrow, and Carroway woke up while I was patching up Censik, so Chapel took care of making sure he’s still got all his marbles.”

He heard his girlfriend chuckle lightly behind him. That was the nice thing about her coming from a family of medical and military types, she got the humor and rhythm of the ship, but she especially followed along with Bones pretty well. She had cross-trained for Security and as a Medic, and she was originally from a Southern state like he was, so sometimes they made Jim pretend-gag at all their countrified expressions. One time, Jim had even banned them both from using metaphors or figures of speech for a whole day. Bones had waited till one minute past, and proceeded to barrage Jim. Rafe had nearly laughed herself silly over Jim’s reaction.

“Thanks for saving my team, Doc.”

He reached, getting a hand on her elbow when he’s intended to catch her hand. He had to have been more tired than he thought, if he was misjudging where body parts were.

“Just doin’ my job, darlin’.”

She leaned, kissing the corner of his jaw, then returning to working out the kinks in his spine and ribcage. Within a couple minutes, she had reached his waist and was working out a nasty spot where he had been getting muscle spasms for at least the last 7 hours as he had been working on Ensign Carroway’s ribs. They had been so mangled, Leonard hadn’t been entirely sure they could save the young man. Rafe, along with Jim and Spock, had come in several times to check on everyone.

“Did Jim tell you about Cupcake?”, she asked. Leonard was sure he had spoken to Jim several times in the last 24 hours, but most of them had been quick updates on how the away team’s injured members were doing. Rafe and ‘Cupcake’ had both been injured, though neither required more than a derma-patch to heal the skin overnight, and some time to let the bruises fade. The others had needed various levels of surgery and lots of work from the dermal-regenerator.

“Refresh my memory, was it about his wounds? They were pretty superficial.”

She shook her head, still working out the kink in his lower spine.

“No, about his resigning.”

That got Leonard’s attention in a hurry. He tilted to look over his shoulder, instantly regretting it as his lower back spasmed and his neck decided to crack loudly and with a twinge of pain.

“What?”

Rafe’s one hand moved to his neck, letting the heat of her palm sink in while her other hand moved to the spasming area on the small of his back.

“Between some lingering issues he has over Krall and having just gotten married to that researcher he met back in Yorktown, he says he can’t do this work anymore. He wants to be on solid ground and not making life-or-death decisions anymore.”

“Can’t say I blame him.”

She nodded, returning her second hand back to Leonard’s neck and shoulders, helping loosen him up just a bit more.

“Has Jim mentioned what he’ll do?”

She shrugs.

“Not to me, at least not yet. I have a meeting with him first thing in the morning.”

“I don’t think Jim had time to tell me this before they went down to the station.”

Leonard reached, getting Rafe’s hand this time and looking at it. He could see where she still had bruises on the knuckles from punching one of the pirates. Space pirates. Leonard had almost laughed when he heard what had been encountered at the derelict space station they were supposed to stop at in order to wait for a dignitary who would be hitching a ride with them for the next few days. The dignitary and her entourage had walked right into the mess, and due to fear of crossfire, some good old fashioned brawling had ensued.

Leonard turned, keeping Rafe’s right hand in his grasp as he looked her over. Up close, he could see the edge of a derma-patch on her wrist as it peaked from under her long sleeves that he knew hid several bruises, her trousers hid the bandage on her thigh from where a pirate had thrown her into some old equipment boxes before Rafe broke the leg of said pirate. Chapel had patched up three of the seven pirates that had come up injured, and all 19 of the pirate crew were down in the brig at the moment. Jim had promised to make sure each wound on a member of his crew, counted as a separate assault offense these pirates would have to answer for at trial.

“Len, stop worrying. You’ll give yourself wrinkles.”

“Already got ‘em, sweetheart.”

She smiled.

“I know. But you still need to stop worrying so much. Pirates are in the brig, all the away team survived, that Princess and her group are all alright, and no one died- which is a win in my book.”

He nodded, then looked up at her. She looked a bit worried herself, despite the small smile.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t patch you up myself.”

She smiled that bright, kind smile at him. The one that warmed him down to his marrow.

“Dr.McCoy was needed to attend those on death’s doorstep. A nurse could handle putting a few bandaids on me. Now come on, we need to get you out of those bio-hazards you call clothes. I’ll help you with the tunic.”

He was too tired to argue that he could dress and undress himself, allowing her to help him tug the tunic over his shoulders. He then went to the ‘fresher to change out of the soiled and sweaty clothes and into some cotton breeches he had with the Starfleet Medical logo at the hip and down the leg. When he stepped out, he found his bed turned down and his tunic in with his dirty clothes.

“You gonna tuck me in?”, he asked with a crap-eating grin.

“You are naughty, doctor. Santa will bring you coal.”

He smiled a little wider.

“Be worth it.”

He then went over to her and wrapped his arms around her gently, effectively pulling her a little closer to his chest, and allowing him access to kiss her. There was only a 3 in height difference, so he didn’t exactly have to crane his neck for this, which was his last thought before her warm, slightly chapped lips pressed against his. Then all he could think was her.

“Leonard?”

He hummed a noise of response, moving in for a second kiss.

“You need to get some sleep.”

“Later.”

Rafe shook her head, looking up at him with an amused grin.

“Come on, Len. Don’t make me get Chapel to order you.”

Leonard scrunched his nose up and shook his head.

“That’s fighting dirty.”

Rafe just grinned as she answered, “Why do you think I always win? Now come on, _bed_.”

He pretended to salute, although as tired as he was, he doubted it looked like anything more than waving a couple fingers in the air. Once he collapsed into the bed, he was not only aware again of just how wrung out he was, he was also grateful Rafe had the foresight to turn down the blankets. Else he would be sleeping cold atop them all night.

Rafe pulled the blankets over him, allowing him to continue being a lump rather than twisting his back to get at the blankets. Jim would have fun making fun of him at this point, although Jim had rolled Leonard into his blankets like a burrito, more than once back at the Academy and in the first few years of them being in this tin can, before Rafe came along.

Leonard snorted a laugh into his pillow as a thought hit his sleepy, post-crash mind. Rafe leaned closer, pushing the hair from his forehead as she asked, “What’s so funny?”

“Never thought I’d get this. Spock’s had Uhura for ‘s long as I’ve known him,” he half-slurred, “and Jim’s got somebody now, an’ I was a third wheel but a fifth. Was kind of lonely.”

Rafe leaned down, kissing him on the temple.

“Never while I’m around. Promise.”

He nodded into the pillow.

“Don’t forget your other promsis.”, he slurred further.

“Which one?”

“Not to die on me.”

She smiled, her fingers still running through his dark hair, the warmth and pattern doing nothing to help him maintain consciousness. It was sorcery, he was convinced.

“Don’t worry. I’m not in the habit of breaking promises to the people I love. Now sleep.”

“Stay?”

“I have to leave early for that meeting.”

“Don’t care. Won’t wake me. Less you don’t wanna.”

A sigh was all he heard before Rafe moved, curling into the space he left when he sprawled out into his bed, her back turned to him as she reached to set an alarm command into her PADD. She would have to get up early to go change before the meeting, since none of her stuff was in Leonard’s quarters. They had shared a bunk before on two away-missions and technically had shared a chair to sleep in once in the infirmary while waiting for Chapel to wake up from injuries she received when the ship had been attacked about three months ago. Leonard had not made any move yet to go beyond kissing and a bit of snuggling on the sofa, nor had she. He was once burned-twice shy and she was about as experienced with relationships as McCoy was with repairing the Enterprise’s warp core.

Rolling, Leonard wrapped an arm around her middle, tugging her a little closer till her back was flush against his chest. He would hardly mind waking up like that every morning. In fact, he was pretty sure he could get used to falling asleep and waking up in this same position, with the same partner, every day for the rest of his life. One step at a time though, and he would think on it when he was properly rested to make sure he didn’t decide to do something to spook her off.

“Comfortable?”, he asked.

She nodded, her one arm draping over his.

“Snug as a bug, goodnight, Len.”

He smiled into her hair, “Goodnight, Raphaelle.”

She chuckled.

“You’re the only one who calls me that, you know?”

“Good.”

He felt the huff of laughter before she let out a slow breath and was probably already asleep. Unless she was fighting one of her insomniac attacks, she fell asleep in two or three breaths. She claimed it was a leftover from going on camping trips with her step-dad and his sons, as they would break camp at first light to continue hiking or whatnot, and not stop till it was too dark to continue, then have to set up before they could sleep. Leonard was just jealous.

Citrus and kiwi scented the air around her head as Leonard moved his face just a bit closer to her hair. He figured in the morning, or whenever he woke up, his pillows would smell of her hair and the clean linen smell the rest of her body carried. Now, she was so warm that Leonard felt the pull of sleep becoming much harder to resist. He could easily get used to this. To waking up every morning and going to bed every night, surrounded by the warmth of the beautiful woman in his arms.


End file.
